A Part Of The New Dream In Some Minds Then Was Of A
Love Too Pure To Need Or Bear The Bondage Of Authority.
The mere
forced union of marriage ties implied, it was said, a distrust of
fidelity.
When Gilbert Imlay would have married Mary
Wollstonecraft, she herself refused to bind him; she would keep him
legally exempt from her responsibilities towards the father,
sisters, brothers, whom she was supporting. She took his name and
called herself his wife, when the French Convention, indignant at
the conduct of the British Government, issue a decree from the
effects of which she would escape as the wife of a citizen of the
United States. But she did not marry. She witnessed many of the
horrors that came of the loosened passions of an untaught populace.
A child was born to her - a girl whom she named after the dead friend
of her own girlhood. And then she found that she had leant upon a
reed. She was neglected; and was at last forsaken. Having sent her
to London, Imlay there visited her, to explain himself away. She
resolved on suicide, and in dissuading her from that he gave her
hope again. He needed somebody who had good judgment, and who cared
for his interests, to represent him in some business affairs in
Norway. She undertook to act for him, and set out on the voyage
only a week after she had determined to destroy herself.
The interest of this book which describes her travel is quickened by
a knowledge of the heart-sorrow that underlies it all.
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